ASK MAULANA

own doubtful behaviour. Muslims are themselves responsible for this discrimination. According to a Hadith, the Prophet said: “Save yourself from being regarded as objectionable.” Because Muslims do not outrightly disown the actions of those Muslims who are engaged in wrong actions, others in the community will also face ‘discrimination’. If Muslims were to clearly condemn the actions of those who are doing wrong, then only those specific persons who are guilty of the wrong would face the above kind of response, which is termed ‘discrimination’ or ‘anti-Muslim sentiment’. Some Muslims may respond to displays of anti-Muslim sentiment by protesting against them and denouncing what they say is discrimination against them. They might, for instance, campaign for a boycott of a restaurant where Muslims have been turned out from. Or, they may demand that an airline company whose employees had made a Muslim passenger disembark from a plane, wrongly suspecting him to be a terrorist, should issue an apology. Or, they may insist that countries pass stricter laws to counter anti-Muslim discrimination. What do you think of this approach to countering or overcoming antiMuslim sentiments? These cases are due to the law of nature. The solution to them is not that countries pass anti-Muslim discrimination laws. There are only two options before Muslims. First, they should declare that they are not a single community. The case of every individual Muslim is separate and distinct. Thus, if anything happens with a Muslim, Muslims as a whole should not make it their own case but should look at it only as the case of a particular person. However, if Muslims cannot take this option and do consider themselves as a single community or ummah, they should condemn, in clear terms, those among them who engage in negative activities. If they do not condemn these persons, then the rest of the world would surely infer from the wrong actions of these particular Muslims that the entire Muslim community is responsible, because Muslims themselves say that all Muslims are members of a single ummah or community. Such instances of discrimination as you have cited in your question happen on a regular basis with secular persons, but the rest of the secular world does not look at it as a matter of the “secular community”. In the secular world, each person is looked upon as distinct. There is no “secular ummah”. So, when such cases happen with secular persons, the sentiments of secular people do not get hurt, because secular people do not regard themselves as a single community. They regard this as a problem pertaining to those specific individuals. But when such cases